Blackberry KEYone Brings Back The Physical Keyboard At MWC 2017

Before the existence of iPhones, Blackberry was ruling the mobile world flaunting their fully featured physical keyboards. Only clickable buttons on present generation of handsets are power button and volume rockers (home button is already near extinction). In all this rush of getting a sleek phone with maximum screen to body ratio, Blackberry has taken a step back into the future reviving the old skool cool feature, physical keyboard, with the KEYone showcased at MWC 2017. The phone is launched at a price tag of 549$ and will be available from April 2017.

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Already known to the tech community by the name of Mercury, KEYone is the first Blackberry device manufactured by TCL. This information came from a latest license agreement which gives TCL the authority of branding hardware for Blackberry phones. The software and security section is still handled by the Blackberry office in Canada.

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This new device certainly has that vintage presence blended with some really cool features under the hood. The whole keypad is capacitive, which means you can use it just like a touch pad to navigate through. With 52 keys comes 52 ways of defining shortcuts, something which prevents a lot of hassle. You can use Y for YouTube, M for Messenger or W for WhatsApp.

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The KEYone comes with a 4.5-inch display in a 3:2 aspect ratio. The primary camera is a 12MP sensor and the front one is 8MP. 3GB of RAM is provided with 32 GB of internal storage which is not impressive at this price point. Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor handles the performance with a 3505 mAh battery. The company claims the use of 625 brings better battery life. But with 835s already in the market, competition is really tough and this is not an iPhone! People will surely think before buying KEYone.

Security has always been a unique selling point for Blackberry phones. On this device DTEK, on-phone security tool, is in its 3rd version and even more effective than before preventing third party apps to use camera or mic without permission. With the launch of KEYone, TCL aims to increase the market share from 1% to 3% in US by 2020 and to raise their share from 5% to around 8 to 10% in Canada.